February 10, 2021 • 19 mins
The NTSB has concluded its investigation into the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, his daughter and 7 others, and said that it was the decision of the pilot to fly into clouds that caused him to lose his orientation to the ground which led them to flying into the hillside. Ian Duncan, transportation reporter at The Washington Post, joins us for what investigators said contributed to the fatal crash.
Next, how much does it cost for treatment of some of the most severe cases of coronavirus? For one woman, it cost over $1.3 million dollars before insurance covered a large portion, leaving her to still owe over $42,000 which she cannot afford. The trouble lies in the fact that despite some insurers waiving certain costs, people may still be on the hook for a percentage which adds up quickly. Maria La Ganga, reporter at the LA Times, joins us for more.
Finally, a recent study has shown that the U.K. coronavirus variant is indeed rapidly spreading through the U.S. and supports a CDC forecast that it could be the dominant strain here by late March. The good news is that cases and hospitalizations are going down, but experts are worried that the easing of restrictions by some states might let this more transmissible strain continue to take hold. Joel Achenbach, science reporter at the Washington Post, joins us for more on the spread of Covid variants.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Wednesday, February ten. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the daily Dive. The MTSP has concluded
its investigation into the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant,
his daughter, and seven others, and said that it was
the decision of the pilot to fly into the clouds
(00:20):
that caused him to lose his orientation to the ground,
which led to them flying into the hillside. Ian Duncan,
transportation reporter at The Washington Post joins us for what
investigators said contributed to the spatal crash. Next, how much
does it cost for treatment of some of the most
severe cases of coronavirus? For one woman, it cost over
one point three million dollars before insurance covered a large portion,
(00:43):
leaving her still to owe over forts. The trouble lies
in the fact that despite some insurers waving certain costs,
people may still be on the hook for a percentage,
which adds up quickly. Maria Laganga, reporter at l A Times,
joins us for more. Finally, a Reese and study has
shown that the UK coronavirus variant is indeed rapidly spreading
(01:04):
to the United States and supports the CDC forecast that
it could be the dominant strain here by late March.
Experts are worried that the easing of restrictions by some
states might let this more transmissible strain continue to take bold.
Joel Achenbach, science reporter at the Washington Post, joins us
for more on the spread of COVID variants. It's news
(01:25):
without the noise. Let's dive in. The pilot had a
good relationship with the client and likely did not want
to suppoint him by not completing the flight. This kind
of self induced pressure can adversely affect pilot decision making.
Joining us now is Ian Duncan, transportation reporter at the
Washington Post. Thanks for joining us in. Yeah, thanks having me.
(01:48):
Federal investigators have concluded their investigation into the helicopter crash
that killed Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and I think
it was at nine people total, so seven others. They
concluded that the pilot, are Zo Bayan, failed to follow
his training and he became disoriented and that's really what
caused the whole crash. So even tell us what the
(02:10):
NTSB has said about all this. So they had a
long meeting today where they kind of set out or
the evidence and then formally adopted the conclusion where they
placed the blame pretty squarely on the pilot. They said
that he shouldn't have flown into the clouds, and if
you did, you should have fired the kind of set
of procedures that involved slowing down and carefully trying to
(02:30):
climb out before declaring he was in an emergency situation,
and then he could have got help to kind of
navigate back to something safely. Instead, he flew in at
high speed and was conturning, which led to him getting
disorientated and basically feeling as though he was climbing when
the helicopter was falling, and that's why the helicopters and
(02:51):
crashed into this mountainside there. The NTSB said that between
they investigated a hundred and eighty four similar crash is.
Twenty of them involved helicopters, and a lot of them
had this very same thing where you know, the pilot
kind of lost disorientation. Tell us a little bit more
about it if you can. It has to do with
the inner ear. I think they call it the leans
(03:12):
where you just basically lose place of yourself and flying
in the clouds, you don't have any point of reference. Really,
I think obvious people would be familiar with the feeling
of being dizzy. And you can be flying in such
a way that your body can't work out whether you're
sort of tilting to the side and moving up or down,
exactly how you're moving through space. And normally we can
(03:34):
kind of compensate for this by looking at where is
the ground whereas the horizon, But once you're in clouds,
you can't do that because you just can't see anything,
and so you can be extremely disoriented. And what they're
saying in this case is helicopters have instruments where they
can tell you that kids where the helicopter is pointing
(03:55):
and how it's oriented in space. But if you're not
prepared to kind of switch over to that and look
at that and know to trust that over what your
body is telling you, you can just get confused very easily,
and some proportion of these incidents people end up crashing. Now,
one of the other parts of it, the board members
all concluded as well. They said that he had a
sudden loss of judgment basically, and because he was a
(04:18):
friend of Kobe Bryant, he felt maybe the pressure to
have to go on with the flight to complete the flight,
and that that probably played a role because he did
have training for this type of weather and terrain and
things like that, and he didn't use his best judgment,
maybe because he was trying to please him or something.
That's right. Yeah, they talked about this pressure that sort
(04:39):
of inferring this. They obviously don't have any evidence from
him that he had put this pressure on himself, and
that as you sort of get closer to your destination,
if you haven't thought ahead and about alternative that you
might take, something unexpected happens. You get into this kind
of plan following bias that gets stronger and stronger, and
it becomes harder for you to kind of think, right,
(05:00):
I need to stop and do something different. And so
they say that as one of the contributing factors to
what happened here, And they said this happens with high
profile clients that pilots want to impress them and do
a good job. I think you sort of imagine the dynamic,
and that they thought that this was at play. The
helicopter itself did not have a black box. There are
recommendations that you know a lot of helicopters should have
(05:22):
these terrain warning systems that could help notify you, you know,
you're getting too close to a hillside things like that.
But even the NTSB said that even if that was
in place for this particular incident, that that might not
have helped them, might have even been more confusing. The
ant Speed board member who went to California to oversee
the investigation last year, she could have brought it up
(05:44):
at a news conference, and it has become something that
has been written about a lot. There's been legislations produced
in Congress about it, and its space makes sense. Oh well,
if the system tells you, hey, you're about to crash,
like maybe that would stop this kind of crashed. But
what they really were at pains to make yeah today
at the board meeting, is those systems only work when
the pilot is really in control of the helicopter, and
(06:07):
that in this case he wasn't in control. The helicopter
was essentially out of his control, and so any warning
wouldn't have really helped him recover the situation. The investigation
was a little bit over a year. You know, they
used the drone to recreate the flight path, you know,
so they do their due diligence when they go through
these types of investigations, and you know, there's a bunch
of lawsuits. Obviously things kind of come up from this.
(06:29):
Our condolences go out to all the family members and everything,
but these are other things that still need to be resolved.
Vanessa Bryant has sued the helicopter company, so these are
all things that we have to look into. And the
ntsb S conclusions can't be used as evidence and lawsuits,
which I found was pretty interesting. Yeah, I mean, I
think if you were to look at the fact that
the speak kind of put together they would support as
(06:51):
Bryant's kind trollly more than those made by the company.
That the rules are sort of pretty clear that you
can use some of the facts information that was developed
a new investigation, but you can't just put the conclusion
in front of, you know, jury and say, well, here's
what the NTSP said. So you have to agree that
they want the jury to be able to kind of
reach an independent judgment. The lawsuits have not really moved
(07:14):
forward because the procedural issue about the SOO government's involvement
in that they probably continue to play out over the
coming months and years. Ian Duncan, transportation reporter at the
Washington Post, Thank you very much for joining us. Yeah,
thank you. Almost half of them either never waived bills
(07:42):
the cops or the waivers have expired, so going in
you don't really know what you're gonna have to pay
on the you know, coming out. Joining us now is
Maria Laganga, reporter at the l A Times. Thanks for
joining us, Maria, my pleasure. One of the things I've
always been interested throughout this pandemic is about how treatment
(08:04):
for COVID nineteen is calculated and we'll get paid. And
we've heard some stories of people getting really high bills.
We've heard other stories about supposedly insurers are waiving all
of the COVID expenses. It's kind of run the gamut, really,
But Maria, you wrote an article looking into a couple
of people, but mostly a woman named Patricia Mason up
(08:25):
in Vacaville, and the bill that she had for her
coronavirus treatment it ended up being one million, three hundred
and thirty nine thousand one dollars. She's really on the
hook forty two dollars a little bit over that. But
you know, even then, her and her family they don't
know how they're gonna pay for it. Maria, tell us
(08:46):
a little bit about how this all works. I wish
I could tell you about how it works. I think
patients and hospitals are pretty much confused about what to
do and how to do it because there is no real,
codified way that patient care is being paid for. The
most expensive patients are the ones who are in hospitals
(09:08):
for a very long time on ventilators, on you know,
a machine called the ecmo machine which can bypass your
heart and lungs, and all of these are you know,
thirty dollars a day for that kind of care. And
the problem is is that the federal government, through the
Cares Act, it basically requires that testing is paid for
(09:30):
and I said the vaccine will be paid for. It
also covers more or less uninsured people. It's complicated. Hospitals
have to apply and it's kind of a finite pool
of money, but they are better off. But insurance companies,
many of them, have voluntarily waived all co pays. So like,
(09:51):
if your insurance will pay of your hospital stay and
you're on the hook for five percent, a hospital that
waves that will wave your five percent and we'll wave
your co pays and will waive your deductibles, which is great.
The problem is it's voluntary, and these waivers a lot
of them have end dates on them. In looking at
the website for I think it's called it's a Hip
(10:13):
American Health Insurance Plans. It's an industry trade group. They
have a list of like a just under a hundred
and fifty medical plans, and almost half of them either
never waived bills, the co pays or the waivers have expired,
so going in, you don't really know what you're gonna
have to pay on the you know, coming out. And
(10:36):
the other part about this that's interesting is that under Obamacare,
certain insurance companies are required to have a cap on
your out of pocket expenses. Those caps are I think,
for one, it's seventeen thousand dollars. Now that's a chunk
of change too. I mean, a lot of families can't
come up with seventeen thousand dollars quickly. And then Mrs
(10:58):
Mason her plan because it was a plan that was
grandfathered in before the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, there's
no out of pocket maximum, so that's why she's on
the hook. To back to Patricia Mations case. I mean,
she really got it worse. At one point, the doctor's
attending her called her husband said she had less than
(11:18):
a thirty chance of surviving COVID nineteen. She had to
be put on the ventil Later, she had a really
tough go at it. She is out, obviously she's recovered,
but she still has lingering effects, you know, brain fog
and swollen joints and you know, pain and all that.
So that could even be other medical bills further on.
Who knows if any of that will be covered. But
(11:39):
obviously in her main stay whatever they were treating her
worth pharmacy charges, respiratory services, just staying in the intensive
care units there. Those things really racked up the bill.
And as you mentioned, her insurance paid for a lot
of it. I think it paid of it. She still
had to pay five percent, but that was still this
huge number for her. Five percent of more than a
(11:59):
million dollar ours. There's a lot of money, you know.
I don't know that many people who have forty dollars
to spare or even not to spare, you know. I
mean one of the things that the Federal Reserve in
a report that came out and May said is that
you know of US adults either lost a job or
had their hours cut last March, which was you know,
(12:21):
this first big intense surge, and eighteen percent of adults
had medical debt even before the pandemics started, So they're
up a creek. Maria La Ganga, reporter at the Elie Times,
thank you very much for joining us. My pleasure. Have
a good day. Our in position globally that we're detecting
(12:49):
these mutations. We know that we have vaccine technology that
potentially can overcome the Joining us now is Joel Achenbach,
science reporter at the Washington Post. Thanks for joining us, Joel,
thanks for having me. We have kind of this good
news bad news thing with coronavirus. We're seeing numbers of
cases going down, We're seeing hospitalizations go down. All great news.
(13:10):
We're the vaccine rollout is ramping up. We're starting to
get about a million a day now. It seems it's
starting to get a little better on that front, but
these coronavirus variants are still very concerning. We just have
a new study out with some information on the UK variant,
basically saying that it's doubling the infections it has here
(13:31):
in the United States every week, and we already saw
the CDC say that by March this probably will be
the dominant strain here in the United States. All the
info is pointing to that. So Joel tell us a
little bit more. It is a good news bad news situation.
I am trying to focus on the good which you
laid out very nicely there, which is the numbers aren't
going down. We are emerging from this catastrophic and very
(13:55):
long surge that began, you know, back in October the
surgeon cases, in hospitalizations and deaths. The final part of that.
The deaths are only now starting to go down. But
you know, we were having three thousand or more people
die every day of COVID, and and so there's a
natural sort of epidemiological wave where you eventually you hit
(14:18):
a peak and the numbers start to come down for
various reasons, including so many people have already gotten the
virus and so on. So but now we enter this
new factor, the variant. So what's it gonna do. Well,
it's not gonna help. It may not cause another surge.
That's a complicated equation, but it does look like it's
(14:38):
more transmissible and to be one one seven. The so
called UK variant is spreading in the US. When we
talk about location in the United States, we see that
Florida has the highest estimated prevalence of this variant, and
I think California might be after them. California has a
fair number of cases, just raw number of cases, but
(15:00):
it was not doubling in speed as fast as Florida,
or as a matter of fact, as fast as the
country on the whole. I guess because California, maybe a
little better about restrictions, has gone to this whole crisis
with so many cases recently at the big surge. The
statistic is a little hard to grasp. We say it's doubling,
(15:22):
we're talking about its prevalence among positive test results. So
just a few weeks ago it was less than one
percent of positive and test results of infections confirmed infections.
Less than one percent was this UK variant. Now it's
close to ten percent in Florida. So it's just taken
off like crazy. About every nine point eight days nationally,
(15:46):
this variant doubles in prevalence, So it's on track to
become essentially just take over and become the dominant strain
that's moving around. That doesn't mean that every nine in
eight days there's gonna be twice as many coronavirus infections
because these other strains are going down. And here's the
(16:06):
other good news bad news thing about it when it
comes to the other strains. So the UK strain seems
to be more prevalent now this one, while it's more transmissible,
they say that the vaccine's effectiveness against this one is
still about the same. The more troubling ones seem to
be the South African and Brazilian strains. They have a
specific mutation that maybe people are getting reinfected more by
(16:30):
this one and that one. Also, they say that the
vaccines effectiveness might not be as much to be one
three five one for those tracking the numbers, that's the
South Africa strain or the one first identified in South
Africa that has a mutation that's called the E four
eight four K. They call it the EK mutation, which
(16:52):
seems to allow the virus to escape some of the
antibody response that either through natural infects and or from vaccines.
And so the vaccines still work to some degree and
may stop severe disease, but they may be less effective
at stopping and infection, and the one scene in Brazil
(17:13):
known as the p one that also has that same
EK mutation. That mutation has been seen only in a
handful of the United Kingdom variant, and so everyone's watching
that closely. It's important to understand that, you know, we
think we know what the map is right now of
where the variants are and what we're dealing with, but
the virus is constantly mutating. It's this is a moving target.
(17:36):
So you know, I don't think there's anything the panic
about with these variants, because the vaccines in general work
and you can retool them. But I think it's all
kind of sobering that this is going to take longer
to get through this pandemic because the virus is gonna
find workarounds and so we'll just have to stay on
top of it. The concern now is for public health
(17:58):
experts is the easing of restrictions when we're seeing it
all over as the cases start going down. I think
it was Iowa they lifted their states partial mask mandate.
So little things like this have experts worried that these
new variants could you know, help some type of boom
going again. I think people should still be cautious and
assume if you're around strangers, if you're close to other people,
(18:22):
you know that you need to wear a mask, you
need to you know, wash your hands and try to
stay socially distanced. I realized that there are people who
can't do that because they work in a hospital or
they are essential workers. They're at the grocery stores that
you know, the drug stores. Some people they can't be
totally protected against possible infection. The new B one one seven,
(18:43):
this this UK variant, it looks like it could be
thirty five to forty more transmissible. But it's not going
to fall out of the sky. It's not lurking in
the bushes. You know this this you need committance measures
to protect yourself ideally and try tomit the amount of
new infections. That's that's what we really need to do
(19:03):
as a country, is to put the clamp down on
this thing and also cut off the viruses opportunities to
mutate further. Joel Achenbach, science reporter at the Washington Post.
Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for
having me. I appreciate it. That's it for today. Join
(19:28):
us on social media at Daily Dive pod and Brook,
Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment, give us a rating,
and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Allow
us and I Heard Radio or subscribe wherever you get
your podcast. This episode of The Daily Divers produced by
Baker Right and engineered by Tony Sarrantina. I'm most Careers
and this was your Daily dive.
It's Wednesday, February ten. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles
and this is the daily Dive. The MTSP has concluded
its investigation into the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant,
his daughter, and seven others, and said that it was
the decision of the pilot to fly into the clouds
(00:20):
that caused him to lose his orientation to the ground,
which led to them flying into the hillside. Ian Duncan,
transportation reporter at The Washington Post joins us for what
investigators said contributed to the spatal crash. Next, how much
does it cost for treatment of some of the most
severe cases of coronavirus? For one woman, it cost over
one point three million dollars before insurance covered a large portion,
(00:43):
leaving her still to owe over forts. The trouble lies
in the fact that despite some insurers waving certain costs,
people may still be on the hook for a percentage,
which adds up quickly. Maria Laganga, reporter at l A Times,
joins us for more. Finally, a Reese and study has
shown that the UK coronavirus variant is indeed rapidly spreading
(01:04):
to the United States and supports the CDC forecast that
it could be the dominant strain here by late March.
Experts are worried that the easing of restrictions by some
states might let this more transmissible strain continue to take bold.
Joel Achenbach, science reporter at the Washington Post, joins us
for more on the spread of COVID variants. It's news
(01:25):
without the noise. Let's dive in. The pilot had a
good relationship with the client and likely did not want
to suppoint him by not completing the flight. This kind
of self induced pressure can adversely affect pilot decision making.
Joining us now is Ian Duncan, transportation reporter at the
Washington Post. Thanks for joining us in. Yeah, thanks having me.
(01:48):
Federal investigators have concluded their investigation into the helicopter crash
that killed Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and I think
it was at nine people total, so seven others. They
concluded that the pilot, are Zo Bayan, failed to follow
his training and he became disoriented and that's really what
caused the whole crash. So even tell us what the
(02:10):
NTSB has said about all this. So they had a
long meeting today where they kind of set out or
the evidence and then formally adopted the conclusion where they
placed the blame pretty squarely on the pilot. They said
that he shouldn't have flown into the clouds, and if
you did, you should have fired the kind of set
of procedures that involved slowing down and carefully trying to
(02:30):
climb out before declaring he was in an emergency situation,
and then he could have got help to kind of
navigate back to something safely. Instead, he flew in at
high speed and was conturning, which led to him getting
disorientated and basically feeling as though he was climbing when
the helicopter was falling, and that's why the helicopters and
(02:51):
crashed into this mountainside there. The NTSB said that between
they investigated a hundred and eighty four similar crash is.
Twenty of them involved helicopters, and a lot of them
had this very same thing where you know, the pilot
kind of lost disorientation. Tell us a little bit more
about it if you can. It has to do with
the inner ear. I think they call it the leans
(03:12):
where you just basically lose place of yourself and flying
in the clouds, you don't have any point of reference. Really,
I think obvious people would be familiar with the feeling
of being dizzy. And you can be flying in such
a way that your body can't work out whether you're
sort of tilting to the side and moving up or down,
exactly how you're moving through space. And normally we can
(03:34):
kind of compensate for this by looking at where is
the ground whereas the horizon, But once you're in clouds,
you can't do that because you just can't see anything,
and so you can be extremely disoriented. And what they're
saying in this case is helicopters have instruments where they
can tell you that kids where the helicopter is pointing
(03:55):
and how it's oriented in space. But if you're not
prepared to kind of switch over to that and look
at that and know to trust that over what your
body is telling you, you can just get confused very easily,
and some proportion of these incidents people end up crashing. Now,
one of the other parts of it, the board members
all concluded as well. They said that he had a
sudden loss of judgment basically, and because he was a
(04:18):
friend of Kobe Bryant, he felt maybe the pressure to
have to go on with the flight to complete the flight,
and that that probably played a role because he did
have training for this type of weather and terrain and
things like that, and he didn't use his best judgment,
maybe because he was trying to please him or something.
That's right. Yeah, they talked about this pressure that sort
(04:39):
of inferring this. They obviously don't have any evidence from
him that he had put this pressure on himself, and
that as you sort of get closer to your destination,
if you haven't thought ahead and about alternative that you
might take, something unexpected happens. You get into this kind
of plan following bias that gets stronger and stronger, and
it becomes harder for you to kind of think, right,
(05:00):
I need to stop and do something different. And so
they say that as one of the contributing factors to
what happened here, And they said this happens with high
profile clients that pilots want to impress them and do
a good job. I think you sort of imagine the dynamic,
and that they thought that this was at play. The
helicopter itself did not have a black box. There are
recommendations that you know a lot of helicopters should have
(05:22):
these terrain warning systems that could help notify you, you know,
you're getting too close to a hillside things like that.
But even the NTSB said that even if that was
in place for this particular incident, that that might not
have helped them, might have even been more confusing. The
ant Speed board member who went to California to oversee
the investigation last year, she could have brought it up
(05:44):
at a news conference, and it has become something that
has been written about a lot. There's been legislations produced
in Congress about it, and its space makes sense. Oh well,
if the system tells you, hey, you're about to crash,
like maybe that would stop this kind of crashed. But
what they really were at pains to make yeah today
at the board meeting, is those systems only work when
the pilot is really in control of the helicopter, and
(06:07):
that in this case he wasn't in control. The helicopter
was essentially out of his control, and so any warning
wouldn't have really helped him recover the situation. The investigation
was a little bit over a year. You know, they
used the drone to recreate the flight path, you know,
so they do their due diligence when they go through
these types of investigations, and you know, there's a bunch
of lawsuits. Obviously things kind of come up from this.
(06:29):
Our condolences go out to all the family members and everything,
but these are other things that still need to be resolved.
Vanessa Bryant has sued the helicopter company, so these are
all things that we have to look into. And the
ntsb S conclusions can't be used as evidence and lawsuits,
which I found was pretty interesting. Yeah, I mean, I
think if you were to look at the fact that
the speak kind of put together they would support as
(06:51):
Bryant's kind trollly more than those made by the company.
That the rules are sort of pretty clear that you
can use some of the facts information that was developed
a new investigation, but you can't just put the conclusion
in front of, you know, jury and say, well, here's
what the NTSP said. So you have to agree that
they want the jury to be able to kind of
reach an independent judgment. The lawsuits have not really moved
(07:14):
forward because the procedural issue about the SOO government's involvement
in that they probably continue to play out over the
coming months and years. Ian Duncan, transportation reporter at the
Washington Post, Thank you very much for joining us. Yeah,
thank you. Almost half of them either never waived bills
(07:42):
the cops or the waivers have expired, so going in
you don't really know what you're gonna have to pay
on the you know, coming out. Joining us now is
Maria Laganga, reporter at the l A Times. Thanks for
joining us, Maria, my pleasure. One of the things I've
always been interested throughout this pandemic is about how treatment
(08:04):
for COVID nineteen is calculated and we'll get paid. And
we've heard some stories of people getting really high bills.
We've heard other stories about supposedly insurers are waiving all
of the COVID expenses. It's kind of run the gamut, really,
But Maria, you wrote an article looking into a couple
of people, but mostly a woman named Patricia Mason up
(08:25):
in Vacaville, and the bill that she had for her
coronavirus treatment it ended up being one million, three hundred
and thirty nine thousand one dollars. She's really on the
hook forty two dollars a little bit over that. But
you know, even then, her and her family they don't
know how they're gonna pay for it. Maria, tell us
(08:46):
a little bit about how this all works. I wish
I could tell you about how it works. I think
patients and hospitals are pretty much confused about what to
do and how to do it because there is no real,
codified way that patient care is being paid for. The
most expensive patients are the ones who are in hospitals
(09:08):
for a very long time on ventilators, on you know,
a machine called the ecmo machine which can bypass your
heart and lungs, and all of these are you know,
thirty dollars a day for that kind of care. And
the problem is is that the federal government, through the
Cares Act, it basically requires that testing is paid for
(09:30):
and I said the vaccine will be paid for. It
also covers more or less uninsured people. It's complicated. Hospitals
have to apply and it's kind of a finite pool
of money, but they are better off. But insurance companies,
many of them, have voluntarily waived all co pays. So like,
(09:51):
if your insurance will pay of your hospital stay and
you're on the hook for five percent, a hospital that
waves that will wave your five percent and we'll wave
your co pays and will waive your deductibles, which is great.
The problem is it's voluntary, and these waivers a lot
of them have end dates on them. In looking at
the website for I think it's called it's a Hip
(10:13):
American Health Insurance Plans. It's an industry trade group. They
have a list of like a just under a hundred
and fifty medical plans, and almost half of them either
never waived bills, the co pays or the waivers have expired,
so going in, you don't really know what you're gonna
have to pay on the you know, coming out. And
(10:36):
the other part about this that's interesting is that under Obamacare,
certain insurance companies are required to have a cap on
your out of pocket expenses. Those caps are I think,
for one, it's seventeen thousand dollars. Now that's a chunk
of change too. I mean, a lot of families can't
come up with seventeen thousand dollars quickly. And then Mrs
(10:58):
Mason her plan because it was a plan that was
grandfathered in before the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare, there's
no out of pocket maximum, so that's why she's on
the hook. To back to Patricia Mations case. I mean,
she really got it worse. At one point, the doctor's
attending her called her husband said she had less than
(11:18):
a thirty chance of surviving COVID nineteen. She had to
be put on the ventil Later, she had a really
tough go at it. She is out, obviously she's recovered,
but she still has lingering effects, you know, brain fog
and swollen joints and you know, pain and all that.
So that could even be other medical bills further on.
Who knows if any of that will be covered. But
(11:39):
obviously in her main stay whatever they were treating her
worth pharmacy charges, respiratory services, just staying in the intensive
care units there. Those things really racked up the bill.
And as you mentioned, her insurance paid for a lot
of it. I think it paid of it. She still
had to pay five percent, but that was still this
huge number for her. Five percent of more than a
(11:59):
million dollar ours. There's a lot of money, you know.
I don't know that many people who have forty dollars
to spare or even not to spare, you know. I
mean one of the things that the Federal Reserve in
a report that came out and May said is that
you know of US adults either lost a job or
had their hours cut last March, which was you know,
(12:21):
this first big intense surge, and eighteen percent of adults
had medical debt even before the pandemics started, So they're
up a creek. Maria La Ganga, reporter at the Elie Times,
thank you very much for joining us. My pleasure. Have
a good day. Our in position globally that we're detecting
(12:49):
these mutations. We know that we have vaccine technology that
potentially can overcome the Joining us now is Joel Achenbach,
science reporter at the Washington Post. Thanks for joining us, Joel,
thanks for having me. We have kind of this good
news bad news thing with coronavirus. We're seeing numbers of
cases going down, We're seeing hospitalizations go down. All great news.
(13:10):
We're the vaccine rollout is ramping up. We're starting to
get about a million a day now. It seems it's
starting to get a little better on that front, but
these coronavirus variants are still very concerning. We just have
a new study out with some information on the UK variant,
basically saying that it's doubling the infections it has here
(13:31):
in the United States every week, and we already saw
the CDC say that by March this probably will be
the dominant strain here in the United States. All the
info is pointing to that. So Joel tell us a
little bit more. It is a good news bad news situation.
I am trying to focus on the good which you
laid out very nicely there, which is the numbers aren't
going down. We are emerging from this catastrophic and very
(13:55):
long surge that began, you know, back in October the
surgeon cases, in hospitalizations and deaths. The final part of that.
The deaths are only now starting to go down. But
you know, we were having three thousand or more people
die every day of COVID, and and so there's a
natural sort of epidemiological wave where you eventually you hit
(14:18):
a peak and the numbers start to come down for
various reasons, including so many people have already gotten the
virus and so on. So but now we enter this
new factor, the variant. So what's it gonna do. Well,
it's not gonna help. It may not cause another surge.
That's a complicated equation, but it does look like it's
(14:38):
more transmissible and to be one one seven. The so
called UK variant is spreading in the US. When we
talk about location in the United States, we see that
Florida has the highest estimated prevalence of this variant, and
I think California might be after them. California has a
fair number of cases, just raw number of cases, but
(15:00):
it was not doubling in speed as fast as Florida,
or as a matter of fact, as fast as the
country on the whole. I guess because California, maybe a
little better about restrictions, has gone to this whole crisis
with so many cases recently at the big surge. The
statistic is a little hard to grasp. We say it's doubling,
(15:22):
we're talking about its prevalence among positive test results. So
just a few weeks ago it was less than one
percent of positive and test results of infections confirmed infections.
Less than one percent was this UK variant. Now it's
close to ten percent in Florida. So it's just taken
off like crazy. About every nine point eight days nationally,
(15:46):
this variant doubles in prevalence, So it's on track to
become essentially just take over and become the dominant strain
that's moving around. That doesn't mean that every nine in
eight days there's gonna be twice as many coronavirus infections
because these other strains are going down. And here's the
(16:06):
other good news bad news thing about it when it
comes to the other strains. So the UK strain seems
to be more prevalent now this one, while it's more transmissible,
they say that the vaccine's effectiveness against this one is
still about the same. The more troubling ones seem to
be the South African and Brazilian strains. They have a
specific mutation that maybe people are getting reinfected more by
(16:30):
this one and that one. Also, they say that the
vaccines effectiveness might not be as much to be one
three five one for those tracking the numbers, that's the
South Africa strain or the one first identified in South
Africa that has a mutation that's called the E four
eight four K. They call it the EK mutation, which
(16:52):
seems to allow the virus to escape some of the
antibody response that either through natural infects and or from vaccines.
And so the vaccines still work to some degree and
may stop severe disease, but they may be less effective
at stopping and infection, and the one scene in Brazil
(17:13):
known as the p one that also has that same
EK mutation. That mutation has been seen only in a
handful of the United Kingdom variant, and so everyone's watching
that closely. It's important to understand that, you know, we
think we know what the map is right now of
where the variants are and what we're dealing with, but
the virus is constantly mutating. It's this is a moving target.
(17:36):
So you know, I don't think there's anything the panic
about with these variants, because the vaccines in general work
and you can retool them. But I think it's all
kind of sobering that this is going to take longer
to get through this pandemic because the virus is gonna
find workarounds and so we'll just have to stay on
top of it. The concern now is for public health
(17:58):
experts is the easing of restrictions when we're seeing it
all over as the cases start going down. I think
it was Iowa they lifted their states partial mask mandate.
So little things like this have experts worried that these
new variants could you know, help some type of boom
going again. I think people should still be cautious and
assume if you're around strangers, if you're close to other people,
(18:22):
you know that you need to wear a mask, you
need to you know, wash your hands and try to
stay socially distanced. I realized that there are people who
can't do that because they work in a hospital or
they are essential workers. They're at the grocery stores that
you know, the drug stores. Some people they can't be
totally protected against possible infection. The new B one one seven,
(18:43):
this this UK variant, it looks like it could be
thirty five to forty more transmissible. But it's not going
to fall out of the sky. It's not lurking in
the bushes. You know this this you need committance measures
to protect yourself ideally and try tomit the amount of
new infections. That's that's what we really need to do
(19:03):
as a country, is to put the clamp down on
this thing and also cut off the viruses opportunities to
mutate further. Joel Achenbach, science reporter at the Washington Post.
Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for
having me. I appreciate it. That's it for today. Join
(19:28):
us on social media at Daily Dive pod and Brook,
Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment, give us a rating,
and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Allow
us and I Heard Radio or subscribe wherever you get
your podcast. This episode of The Daily Divers produced by
Baker Right and engineered by Tony Sarrantina. I'm most Careers
and this was your Daily dive.
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